The Rose Petal Beach by Dorothy Koomson Page A

what it was like to live with the constant disapproval of our parents hanging over us, to be happy with who you were even if it wasn’t what you could have been.
    ‘No!’ I said, affronted.
    ‘Why not?’ she replied, her usual smile on her face.
    ‘Why would I is the question you should be asking,’ I replied. ‘Jogging. As. If.’
    ‘Come jogging with me,’ she repeated. ‘It’ll be fun.’
    ‘No way!’ I replied. ‘Have you seen me run? This body,’ I indicated to myself, ‘and these lungs were not made for running.’
    ‘Come jogging with me. I do it every morning before work, but you can just come once a week at first.’
    ‘At first?’
    ‘Once you get into it, you’ll want to come out with me every day.’
    ‘I really won’t. Besides, I’ve got two children to get to school, mornings are a no-no.’
    ‘Why can’t Scott do it?’
    ‘Because he’s got work.’
    ‘So have you.’
    ‘But …’ I stopped talking as it occurred to me that I did have work. I did work, and I worked very hard. Before Scott’s last three promotions, which all happened in quick succession, and so increased his earnings by a significant amount in a short period of time, it was my earnings and savings that kept us afloat, allowed us to afford the house. I made decent money, and I worked long hours if you took into account the things I did when the girls were asleep. It’d just become a given that I would do the school run every day, that I would pick them up, and I would take time off if they were sick, had doctor’s appointments, needed extra bits for school. Scott had stopped doing those things the more he earned – without either of us noticing it seemed. I simply worked around everyone, keeping the house going and earning money.
    Him doing the school run one day a week, or even just getting up with the girls and getting them washed, dressed and making their breakfast, shouldn’t be a big deal.
    ‘Come running with me,’ Mirabelle said, the grin on her face growing wider with every second.
    ‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK.’
    Fourteen months ago
    ‘Come on, girl, you can do it. Keep going.’
    Mirabelle was obviously mistaking me for someone who managed to go five minutes without stopping.
    ‘Come on.’ She was clapping her hands and running backwards, regularly stopping to bounce up and down on the spot to wait for me to catch up, while I dragged myself along the promenade, barely able to keep upright let alone run. I hadn’t realised how unfit I was, now I was feeling it in every cell of my body. My skin hurt, tingled under my clothes like a million needles were pricking me.
How did I manage to get talked into this?
I’d asked myself many times over the last few runs. I never had a definitive answer: it was something to do with fun, and enjoying being around Mirabelle and her energy. And her belief in me, I suppose. It’d been something I hadn’t had in so long – I hadn’t even noticed that until she encouraged me to run. Putting one foot in front of the other was a challenge that I’d never set myself but was enjoying on many levels – most of them masochistic.
    I stopped, placed both palms on my grey jogging-bottom-covered thighs and heaved as much breath into my lungs as I could manage. My running gear was pristine because it was only used once a week, Mirabelle’s running gear was pristine because she had a lot of running clothes.
    There were other people around, of course. None of them seemed to be as unfit as me. I would watch them jog, their heads held high, their bodies at ease, and would wonder how they managed to jump from my stage to their stage, and when that transition would happen for me.
    ‘Come on, just a bit further,’ she cajoled. Sometimes I wanted to take the batteries out of her, she was so exhausting.
    ‘Nah,’ I replied, and staggered a bit further to collapse on a wooden bench.
    Mirabelle came and stood in front of me, a grin on her face, still bouncing so she wouldn’t